Elon Musk-owned artificial intelligence (AI) firm xAI reportedly added a new AI image generator to Grok on Saturday. This image generation model, dubbed Aurora, was confirmed by Musk to be internally developed, unlike Flux which was developed by Black Forest Labs. After spotting the tool in Grok, several users posted images that were said to be generated using Aurora. However, just a few hours later, many users reported that the tool disappeared for them. It is speculated that the AI model was taken down due to loose guardrails in generating images of public figures.
xAI Reportedly Added a New Image Generator to Grok
According to a TechCrunch report, a new image generation model was spotted in the Grok interface within the X (formerly known as Twitter) platform. On the model selector option location at the top of the page, users could reportedly choose the “Grok 2 + Aurora” option to access the image generation capabilities of the new model. But interestingly, xAI did not make any official announcement about the launch of the tool.
However, Musk indirectly confirmed the AI model while replying to a post on X that shared several images generated using Aurora. He said, “This is our internal image generation system. Still in beta, but it will improve fast.”
So this new @grok image generation called Aurora just shipped on a Saturday, what do we think folks?
Looks like trained by them, no evals or details, just, here you go, use the thing.
Seems focused on photo realism
— Alex Volkov (Thursd/AI) (@altryne) December 7, 2024
Separately, Chris Park, Director and Co-Head, X Developer Platform at X, congratulated xAI in a post for “releasing a brand new image gen model — Aurora”. Several users also posted images generated using the AI tool. The model appears to be generating images of public figures like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and copyrighted characters such as Mickey Mouse and Luigi. In one instance, TechCrunch was also able to generate an image of US President Donald Trump with a bleeding face.
Due to the lack of an official announcement, no details are available about Aurora’s model architecture, framework, data training approach, or the source of the data used to train the model. It is also not known whether the model was entirely built in-house or it was built in collaboration with a third-party AI firm.
Adding to the mystery, several users reported the disappearance of the AI model just a few hours after its release. Some speculated that Aurora was accidentally launched due to a testing glitch, while others claimed it was due to the lack of guardrails in generating images. While nothing can be said conclusively due to the lack of an official statement, Gadgets 360 staff members did not find the option to use Aurora at the time of writing.